What each plan includes
A hosted site is on one of three plans: Free, Starter or Premium. The plan decides which parts of Choir Master CMS your site can use. A plan is for the whole choir, however many members or admins you have. This page is for anyone choosing a plan, or wondering why something is missing from their admin panel.
The plans compared
| Free | Starter | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public website, themes and your own pages | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Member portal: announcements, schedule, tracks, files | No | Yes | Yes |
| Email to your members | No | Yes | Yes |
| Your own domain name | No | Yes | Yes |
| Send from your own email address | No | Yes | Yes |
| Ticket sales and check-in at the door | No | No | Yes |
| Donor management and receipts | No | No | Yes |
| "Powered by Choir Master CMS" in the footer | Shown | Shown | Your choice |
| Web address | yourchoir.cmcms.org | Your own | Your own |
For prices, see the plans on the home page. They are in Canadian dollars for choirs in Canada and US dollars everywhere else.
Where each feature is described:
| Feature | Read |
|---|---|
| Public website | Your website |
| Member portal | Members and the member portal |
| Email to your members | Email an announcement to your members |
| Your own domain name | Use your own domain name |
| Send from your own email address | Send announcements from your own address |
| Ticket sales | Tickets: how it works and Take card payments: connect Stripe |
| Donor management | Donors: how it works |
| The footer link | The footer |
What Free means in practice
The Free plan is a complete public website with its admin panel: your pages, concerts, gallery, past events, themes and contact details. It is not a trial and has no set end date, but it carries no warranty or service commitment, and the terms let us change or end it with notice where practicable: see If your site says it is paused. What it leaves out:
- No member portal. Members, announcements, the schedule, rehearsal tracks, member files and useful links are all part of the portal, and none of them is available.
- The only emails your site sends are login links, so that you and your other admins can get into the admin panel.
- Contact form messages are not emailed to you. When a visitor uses the contact form, the message is kept in the admin panel, under Messages, for you to read there. Look in regularly. See Contact form messages.
- Your site lives at its
.cmcms.orgaddress. A domain of your own needs a paid plan. - The footer shows "Powered by Choir Master CMS".
The terms that apply to the Free plan in particular are quoted in If your site says it is paused.
What Starter adds
Everything your members need: the member portal with all its parts, announcements emailed to every member, contact form messages forwarded to your inbox, a domain of your own, and the choice to send announcements from your choir's own email address.
What Premium adds
Ticket sales on your own site with check-in at the door, card payments straight into your choir's own Stripe account, donor records with gifts, campaigns and receipts, and the choice to remove the "Powered by" link from your footer.
Emailing your donors, or the people who hold tickets for a concert, needs Premium, because those lists belong to the donor and ticketing features. See Email your donors and Email a concert's ticket holders.
The footer link
On Free and Starter the "Powered by Choir Master CMS" link is always shown. On Premium you can switch it off: in the admin panel, Site Settings, Footer, Show "Powered by Choir Master CMS".
There is one exception. If you bought the setup and migration package at the founder price, you agreed to keep the link for 12 months, and it stays for that time even on Premium. See Have us set up your site.
The rules for every plan and edition are in Plans and editions compared.
See which plan your site is on
There are two places:
- Your account page. The Hosted site card reads, for example, "Harmony Community Choir is at harmony.cmcms.org, on the Starter plan."
- The admin panel. The foot of the menu shows your choir's name and, under it, the plan: Free plan, Starter plan or Premium plan.
What you see when your plan lacks something
Nothing is greyed out or locked with a padlock. With one exception (Email), a feature your plan does not include is simply absent from the admin menu and the dashboard, and the public site does not offer it. A few places explain why:
| Where | What it says | When |
|---|---|---|
| The dashboard | "This site is on the Free plan. It includes the public website. The member portal, emails to members and a domain name of your own are part of the paid plans." with a See plans button | Free |
| Site Settings, Features | "The member portal and its parts (announcements, schedule, rehearsal tracks, files, links) are not included in this site's plan, so those switches have no effect for now. They are kept as you set them." | Free |
| Site Settings, Donate page | "Taking gifts by card on this page is not part of this site's plan, so "Take gifts by card on this page" has no effect for now. The rest of the page, and its Donate button, work as always." with a See plans link | Free and Starter |
| "Your site's email is sent for you, under your choir's name. Sending announcements through your own mail server, from your own address, is part of a paid plan." with a See plans link | Free |
Every See plans link leads to your account page, where the plans are: see Move to a paid plan.
What the admin menu shows on each plan:
| Menu item | Free | Starter | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Members, Announcements, Schedule, Rehearsal Tracks, Member Files, Useful Links | Hidden | Shown | Shown |
| Shown, with the notice above | Shown | Shown | |
| Ticketing | Hidden | Hidden | Shown |
| Donors | Hidden | Hidden | Shown |
Items that are shown can still be switched off by you, in Site Settings, Features. See Switch pages and features on or off.
Moving down and back up
Changing plan never deletes anything by itself.
- Your switches are kept. The feature switches in Site Settings stay exactly as you set them. A plan that lacks a feature overrides its switch while you are on that plan, and the switch takes effect again when you move back up.
- Your records are kept. Members, announcements, donors, gifts and ticket orders stay in your site's database while a plan hides them, and are there again when you return to a plan that includes them. How long they are kept after a paid plan ends is set out in Invoices, changing plan and cancelling.
To change plan, see Move to a paid plan or Invoices, changing plan and cancelling.